by Tad Williams
“But, of course, that is what everyone else will remember about him. What I will always remember about our dear Kendrick was the way he would fume and scowl when Barrick and I teased him, but at last would give in and laugh as hard as any of us. Why is it that you and Kendrick could both do that, that you could see your own foolishness and admit it, even laugh about it, but Barrick and I cannot?
“There is more, certainly, that . . .”
She stopped. A memory of Kendrick pretending to be angry at her while struggling to hide a smile had suddenly come back with such power that for a moment she could only sit and weep silently. Rose Trelling stirred in her bed on the opposite side of the room, murmured something, then fell back to sleep. Anazoria, Briony’s youngest maid, scarcely ten years old, was snoring like an ancient dog on her little pallet on the floor. It was strange to be awake in the midst of all these sleepers—like being a ghost.
She went back and scratched out part of the last sentence, changed it to read, “. . . that Kendrick could do that and you can do it, too,” because she realized she had put the king, her father, into the past again as though he were dead instead of only imprisoned. The gods willing, it is nothing but a false fear! Still, the whole thing seemed a hopeless exercise. How could she tell him what truly was happening without making him frantic with worry? How could she describe any of it, the terrifying Twilight People, the Tollys’ flirtation with the Autarch, the seemingly unending stream of dreadful tidings? How could she tell her father how frightened she was for Barrick without breaking Olin’s heart?
She put the pen back down and read over what she had written. The greatest problem, of course, was that she couldn’t speak about what was troubling her most—her twin’s terrible story. Since Barrick had told her, it had stayed in the middle of her like a swallowed stone, a great, indigestible lump. Some days the heaviness of it made it hard for her to walk, to talk, even to think. She hoped that by hearing it she had lightened her brother’s load, because he had certainly burdened her. How could such a thing be true? But if it was not true, how was it possible that Barrick, her twin, could be such a liar? And if it was true, how could she possibly write to her father as though nothing had changed, as though she was the same loving daughter in the same, unchanged world?
Either Barrick is the world’s greatest liar . . . or Father is . . .
It was pointless. She had thought she could write to him, but she couldn’t.
Briony was holding the last of the burning parchment to the candle when someone knocked at the door. She immediately dropped the ashes and stub of paper into the candleholder, as though she had been caught doing something wicked. “Who is there?”
“It’s Lord Brone, Your Highness,” said one of her guards through the door. “He wishes . . .”
“Oh, Perin’s bloody red beard, I can tell her myself,” growled the lord constable. “Let me come in, please, Princess. I have urgent business.”
Even this early, with the sky outside still quite dark, Avin Brone was dressed for the daylight hours, although he looked to have accomplished it in a hasty manner. He stared around the room as though searching for enemies but saw only slumbering women.
“We must speak in private,” he told her.
“They are all deep sleepers, but if you fear for their modesty, we can step into the hallway . . .”
“No. This is not to be discussed in front of the guards. Not yet.” He looked around the bedchamber once more. “Ah, well,” he said at last. “We must speak quietly, then.”
She gestured for him to sit down at the writing desk, but she herself remained standing. Something in his manner had alarmed her; she felt an almost animal urge toward flight. Although Brone seemed his ordinary dour, distracted self, she could sense something deeper was wrong, and she began to wonder how long it would take the guards to respond if she called out for them. Almost without thinking about it, she took a step back from the lord constable, then another; then, a little ashamed, she turned the movement into a search for a thicker wrap. She was conscious for the first time in an hour that her slippers were thin and her feet were cold.
“Gailon Tolly has been found.”
“Where?”
“In a Marrinswalk field. In a ditch, to be more precise, covered over with branches.”
“What?” For a moment she had a mad vision of Gailon in a kind of hiding-hole, playing a child’s game. Then she understood. “Oh, merciful Zoria, in a ditch? Is he . . . ?”
“Dead, yes. Oh, most assuredly dead—along with the men who rode beside him. Half a dozen in all, thrown together into a hasty grave, if you can even call it such.”
She was stunned. “But . . . how . . . ?” Briony forced herself to think more carefully. “What happened? Who found him?”
“One of the last musters out of south Marrinswalk, four or five pentecounts, I don’t recall. They came in late last night, an hour or so after the last bell, hurrying to bring in their news. They had been coming up the Silverside Road outside Oscastle and saw a great number of ravens and other birds swarming in a field. When their leader took them closer they saw something shining. It was a buckle.”
Briony’s knees suddenly felt weak; she had to take a step to steady herself. Brone came up out of the chair quickly and guided her to it in his stead. “But . . . how?” she asked. “Who did this? Bandits? Surely the fairy folk have not moved so far south?” Gailon Tolly, dead. Handsome, selfsatsified Gailon. She hadn’t liked him, but she had never wanted . . . never imagined . . .
“I can’t say, Princess. Bandits seem the most likely explanation—almost all their money and jewelry had been taken. Horses, too. There are more than a few such bands who range the border between Silverside and Marrinswalk and call the Whitewood their home. The thieves missed a brooch, though, and one of the Marrinswalk men brought it in. That is our only advantage—the discoverers do not know yet whose bodies they found, which has given me enough time to tell you first, before it spreads all through the castle.” He extended his broad fist and uncurled the fingers. A round brooch with a thick pin covered much of his palm, the kind worn at the neck of a riding cloak. The silver was still streaked with mud, but the humped shoulders and horned head of the bull were impossible to mistake.
Briony forced herself to swallow. She felt as though she would be ill. “That’s his. I’ve seen him wear it.”
“Or at least it’s one of the Tolly family brooches. But I think we must assume one of the corpses is Gailon.”
“Where are they?” she asked at last, staring at the mud-died silver circle as though it were an actual piece of bone. “The bodies?”
“They have been taken to a temple in Oscastle. Until they got there, the soldiers who found them thought the dead were local men, but no one in Oscastle had any idea who they could be. The mantis in that town thought he recognized one corpse as being Gailon Tolly, however, and being a wise man, he put his fears in a letter and entrusted it to the captain of the Marrinswalk pentecounts for secrecy. Still, the rest of the muster are already telling their story to anyone here who will listen. It is only hours at the most until Hendon Tolly hears of it, and he will have no trouble deciding who these mysterious dead really are.”
“Merciful Zoria! As it was, he all but accused us of murdering Gailon—he will trumpet it from the walls now!”
“Yes, and you did not help things with your foolishness at dinner. Go ahead and throw me in the stronghold, but it must be said.”
She waved her hand. The sour taste in her mouth had worsened. “Yes, yes, and I agree, and now you’ve said it. But what do we do? What do we do when Hendon starts up again, claiming I’ve had his brother killed?”
“Perhaps he won’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps he won’t. Perhaps it wasn’t bandits, or even these Twilight folk. Maybe it was the Tollys’ southern friends.”
It took her a moment. “The Autarch? Are you suggesting the Autarch would reach all the way into the Ma
rch Kingdoms to murder one of his allies—one of his only allies, as far as we know?”
“Perhaps they didn’t become allies. Perhaps the Tollys turned him down.”
If what Brone told me in the first place was even true, she reminded herself. Briony put her hands to her head. Now that Barrick was gone, she could fully trust no one. “What a dreadful tangle! I can’t make sense of it—I have to think. Perhaps you’re right, but that still doesn’t help us any. Unless Hendon Tolly also suspects the Autarch’s hand and decides he can’t afford to make too much of a fuss . . .” She took a long, shuddering breath, trying to calm stomach and spirit. “I only know that it will make matters worse at a time when I believed such a thing wasn’t possible.” As Briony spoke, she picked up the inkwell and moved it back into the drawer, carefully put away the blotter, then the sealing wax.
“What are you doing?” asked Brone. For the first time she noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the weariness on his pouchy face. He had probably not slept more than an hour or two.
“Just clearing things away. I was going to write a letter to someone, but it’s become clear that there’s not much point to it.” She paused. “Dead—Zoria preserve us! Poor Gailon. I never thought I’d say that . . .”
For a moment she thought Avin Brone was shaking her chair for some reason—that he was angry and had been hiding it—but then she realized he was several steps away and swaying unsteadily too. In fact, it seemed the whole world was shaking. A bench hopped on the floor like a skittish horse. One of her jewelry chests jittered off a table and smashed on the flagstones. Across the room, Moina sat up and stared around blearily. By the time the trembling stopped little Anazoria was awake too, frightened and crying loudly. Even heavy-sleeping Rose seemed to have been shaken almost to wakefulness.
“Just a tremor of the earth,” the lord constable said, frowning at his sluggard niece, who had only yawned and turned over, but his leathery face had gone pale. “I felt one like it when I was a boy. It is over now.”
Briony’s heart was beating very fast. “Is it, Lord Brone? Or is it that the world is approaching its end?”
“I must say that I have never known it so discomforted in my lifetime,” he admitted.
The Lord of the Hot Wet Stone had no face, or at least no face that Chert could see, only a murky, red-shot blackness between his gigantic shoulders and his shining crown. Big as a mountain, he looked down from his throne but said nothing. The only sound in his immense throne room was the low groan of great stones shifting, the roots of the world still alive and unsettled even all these eons after the Days of Cooling.
At last Chert could take no more. “Please, Grandfather, do not punish me!”
The groaning continued, but the mighty figure said nothing.
“I meant no harm. I trespassed, but I meant no harm!”
The murk regarded him. A hand as vast as a wall slowly lifted and spread above him—a benediction? A curse? Or did his god simply mean to crush him like a fly? The groaning stopped for a moment, then began again, and for the first time Chert began to hear something like words in it, a dim, gnashing cadence.
He is speaking to me, Chert realized. But it is too slow, too deep, for me to hear!
Too slow . . . too deep . . . The light was flickering now, the massive shape hard to see. Too deep . . . He couldn’t understand the words. His god was speaking to him, but he couldn’t make sense of what was being said.
“Tell me!” he shouted as the darkness closed in. “Tell me so that I can understand . . . !”
But his god had no comprehensible tale to tell.
He woke up shivering from the oppressive dream—if dream it had truly been. For a moment he couldn’t remember what place he was in, but the boy’s body pressed against him brought it back. Shivering, Chert was shivering—no, shaking all over.
So cold . . . he thought, but realized a moment later that the air was actually hot, hot enough to suck the sweat off his skin. Nevertheless an unpleasant chill was on him, an icy, bone-deep discomfort, nor could he stop shaking. Also, and far more frightening, the voice of the god still rumbled in his ears.
No, it was the earth itself growling—one of the tremors his people called a Wakeful Elder, unusual but not exceptional. Chert himself was not trembling—the ground beneath him was moving. He darted a fearful glance up at the Shining Man, in size and threatening juxtaposition so much like the god in his dream, but where earlier it had flashed and smoldered it had now gone strangely dark at its center, only a few glimmers moving beneath the surface of the crystalline stone like silvery fish in a pool.
The ground shuddered again, then the groaning died and the greater movement stopped. For another heartbeat or two he could hear the hiss of the beach stones around him as they continued to slide, to find new arrangements, then everything was silent once more.
Flint whimpered. Chert, who had been certain he held a dead child, almost dropped him in surprise, then his heart leaped with unexpected joy and a new terror. “Lad! Talk to me! It’s me, Chert!”
But the boy was still again, his skin still clammy-cold beneath the dirt and dust.
The tunnel. I must carry him back.
He tried to stand, but it was too much effort—he couldn’t even rise to his knees while holding the boy. He set Flint down as gently as he could and then clambered up to stand unsteadily over him. The boy was his own height, weighed almost as much as Chert did: there was only one way to carry him, and that was to get the boy’s entire weight up onto his shoulders, as it was said that Silas of Perikal—or was it one of the other heroes of the big folk’s tales?—had carried a young bullock every day, so that as the bullock grew into its maturity, Silas also grew more and more powerful, eventually to become the mightiest knight of his age.
Or was that Hiliometes the Kracian? Chert wondered blearily as he squatted beside the senseless child. Absently, he pulled the mirror out of the child’s grasp—the boy’s grip was fierce, even in near-death—and put it in his own pouch. It felt like nothing special, no heavier or lighter than it did before, no warmer, no cooler. Yes, it was the Kracian. No, wait, Hiliometes was a demigod—he needed no training to lift great weights. Chert could never keep all the stories of the big-folk heroes straight. So many of them, killing monsters and saving maidens, and they all seemed more or less the same . . .
He hauled the top of Flint’s body up onto his shoulder, then grabbed him around the thighs and lifted until the side of the boy’s belly was against his neck. Grunting, cursing under his breath, yet all the time able to watch his own ludicrous travails as though he were two people at the same time, Chert slowly rose to his feet with the boy’s legs dangling in front and his head dangling down behind. For a moment he was full of the glory of having accomplished the near-impossible; then he took a step and felt his legs already trembling with the exertion, his back knotting at the weight it must bear. Worse, he remembered that he did not know where he had come up out of the tunnel and onto the island. Chert knew he should put the boy down and search instead of trying to carry his weight any farther than necessary, but he also knew that if he did that, he would never manage to lift him again.
It was hard to be certain in the dim light which were footprints and which only shadowed valleys in the piles of smooth stones, but he turned his back to the darkened Shining Man and did the best he could. At the beginning each step was very hard; by the time he had staggered fifty yards and still had not found the tunnel mouth, each step was a sweating, wheezing agony.
Lie down and wait for help, a voice in his head instructed him.
Lie down and die, suggested another as he missed his footing and almost tumbled, almost dropped the helpless child.
The gods help those who help themselves, he thought, and then: I hate the gods. Why should the Elders torture me in this way? Why should they use the boy to hurt me and to hurt Opal?
Another step. Gasping, he almost fell. One more step. But what can you know about what the gods want?
Who are you, little man?
I am Chert of the Blue Quartz clan. I know stone. I do my work. I take care . . . I take care of my . . . my own . . .
But then he did stumble, and fell, and lay panting on the stones with the boy on top of him. When he tried to make himself move again he could not because something dark was covering him, closing his eyes, stealing his wits.
He came up out of exhausted sleep to find himself face to face with horror.
Something was touching his chin and his cheek: a small but ghastly, malformed mask stared down on him from only a short distance away, flare-nostriled, fang-toothed, with leathery black skin. Chert squeaked—he had the breath for nothing more—and tried to beat away the looming, blurry monstrosity, but he was lying on his belly and something was pinning his arms.
“Demon!” he moaned, struggling. The thing retreated, or its horrid face did, but he could still feel something scratching at his neck.
“Not pretty, mayhap,” a voice said, “but un’s carried me well. Seems sour t’name un so.”
Chert stopped fighting, astonished, wondering if he had lost his wits again or was wandering in the tunnels of dream. “Beetledown?”
“Aye.” A moment later the little man clambered down Chert’s shoulder and into his view.
“Why can’t I move? And what was that thing?”
“For movin’, well, it’s thy boy lying athwart ’ee hampering thy arms. That thing, as tha says, well . . . a flittermouse, I calls it. Rode it back here, did I.”
“A flit . . . A bat?”
“Aye, likely.” Something dark leaped past Chert’s face. “There un goes,” said Beetledown a little sadly. “Gone now, afeared because tha would try to roll over un.” He shook his head. “Testing and fidgeting thy flittermouse may be, but a treat to ride once going along proper.”